PDF display of legal texts on kindle3

[oecherprinte]

Hi,

I usually have to carry around tons of legal texts in paper which are also available in pdf. So my question is how those texts might appear on the kindle3. They are currently available for the A4 paper format. How will they look when they are "reflowed" for the kindle3 screen?

I read that there are kindle readers for windows and mac. Will those readers render the pdf the same way the kindle3 does? Which other ways are there to simulate the pdf behaviour kindle? I could imagine that this works when I choose a viewport size of 800x600 px.

Thanks and best regards,

Jens

[abeaty]

You are going to be hard pressed to get a definitive answer to this question.

The Kindle 3 was only announced yesterday and won't be shipped until the end of August.

I am very skeptical that the Kindle 3 will significantly improve PDF rendering over DX and 2. I hope I am wrong, but if I am than you won't know for sure for a month or so.

In terms of the kindle readers for windows and mac, I can't answer that question since I don't use them - sorry.

[=X=]

Originally Posted by oecherprinte

Hi,

I usually have to carry around tons of legal texts in paper which are also available in pdf. So my question is how those texts might appear on the kindle3. They are currently available for the A4 paper format. How will they look when they are "reflowed" for the kindle3 screen?

I read that there are kindle readers for windows and mac. Will those readers render the pdf the same way the kindle3 does? Which other ways are there to simulate the pdf behaviour kindle? I could imagine that this works when I choose a viewport size of 800x600 px.

Thanks and best regards,

Jens

The re-flow PDF feature you are talking about is more of an Amazon service. This works by your emailing your PDF to your kindle account. The charge is about $.15USD. If you put the word "Convert" in the subject (I just found this out yesterday) it will convert your PDF to a MOBI. If you do not it will send you the unmodified PDF and still charge you .$15.

For text base PDF with simple formatting this feature works great. However if it is a more complicated PDF the results will be unsatisfactory.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Now if we are talking about how K3 handles PDF then. The K3 is not out yet so there is no hands on advice I can give you but from their site they say.

Improved PDF Reader
Now with new dictionary lookup, notes and highlights, and support for password protected PDFs. Easily carry all of your documents on the go.

I'm guessing their PDF is much like the K2 but with the additional features mentioned above. I do not believe it will have PDF reflow, not a loss in my opinion. PDF re-flow is great on my 3" screen blackberry, but horrible on my 6" screen SONY.


The way the current K2 works is it renders the full PDF on the page. So it would shrink an A4 page size down to a 6" screen. This is pretty hard to read. There are work around, some tools here do a nice job of reformatting PDF to fit on a 6", but none look as good as the original and the do take time to configure. Also the K2/K3 have zoom where you can zoom into a page.

My honest advice is go for the DX, especially if most of the documents are A4 PDF. You will save lots of time, by not having to reformat/zoom to read you PDF.

=X=

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by =X=

The re-flow PDF feature you are talking about is more of an Amazon service. This works by your emailing your PDF to your kindle account. The charge is about $.15USD. If you put the word "Convert" in the subject (I just found this out yesterday) it will convert your PDF to a MOBI.

Outside the US, the charge is higher, and per MB, rounded up.

You also get the variant @free.kindle.com address for no-charge conversions.

It forwards the converted file to your email, so you'll have to transfer it manually via USB, but there's no fee because there's no wireless delivery involved.

Also, if you put anything other than "Convert" (and *only* "convert") in the subject line, the conversion will fail. I guess Amazon's servers are picky about that.

The conversion service is pretty decent for not-too-complicated PDFs.

Originally Posted by oecherprinte

I read that there are kindle readers for windows and mac. Will those readers render the pdf the same way the kindle3 does? Which other ways are there to simulate the pdf behaviour kindle?

Kindle for Mac, at least, will not read PDFs. I just tried dragging and dropping one, and also putting it in the Kindle Content folder. Didn't see it, wouldn't open it. Nor would the Kindle Previewer, which is normally supposed to simulate how your files will appear on a physical Kindle device.

If you have a non-copyright sample PDF, or could generate one of your own that looks like the texts you regularly use, perhaps you could upload it and members could take screenshots of how it appears on their Kindles?